Have you tried a wooden pole instead of the pipe? It may not pick up the high frequency vibrations as easily as the pipe might and reduce the false rain readings you’re getting. I’m using an 8’ viny coated closet rod from Home Depot.
Just finished putting together this standalone station next to my Tempest for my Cocorahs Rain gauge.
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Hello my fellow weather watchers! Just received my station and decided to mount it about 10ft off the ground on a pergola. So far the wind measurements are spot on!
I’m wondering how long before my station shows up on places like Weatherbug and Wunderground. Any ideas? Confirmed my station data is set to public.
I do see it on the tempest wx site, so it appears telemetry is good.
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To publish on WeatherBug, you need to request technical support.
Integration into W.U. is part of the Tempest setup.
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Here’s mine alongside my older Davis Vantage. It’ll be interesting to see the difference between the two stations.
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New Tempest owner. I have had the unit for about 2 weeks now. My original mounting was on the end gable of the shed on a steel chainlink fence top pole extending about 7 feet above the roof peak. This is where I had an Accurite 5-in-1 until it died. It performed quite well there. Last Friday we had a storm system go through and all was well with all sensors recording as expected. The rainfall was accurate until the end of the storm. Wind and gusts during the rain were in the 2-16 mph range and rain accumulation was about 5 inches. As the front came through and cleared out the rain the wind increased to 22 mph gusting to 35 mph and the rain had stopped. But… the Tempest said that the rain increased to “Extreme” and over a 45 minute period the accumulation increased to 10 inches while no rain was falling at all.
Since then, there have been a few wind gusts up to 25 mph and no false rain.
So, I researched the false rain issue and figured the vibrations were from the metal pole and/or the metal shed. I originally planned to site the Tempest further out to the edge of the pasture in a more open location. Yesterday I put a T-post in about the spot I want to site it and zip tied a 6" piece of rigid pvc pipe to the top. It is currently at about 5 feet above the ground. The T-post is not touching the fence. I took down the Tempest and mounted it at this new location. My intention is to verify it will still be able to communicate with the hub from there and the false rain is no longer a problem. The shed location is 105 feet from the hub and had an RSSI of about -43. The pasture location is 241 feet and has an RSSI of -66. I expect this to improve when I put in the permanent mounting at about 16 feet above the ground. The mount will be a 14 foot 6x6 set 3 feet in the ground, so will be 11 feet high with 5 feet of pipe above it. I will purchase an 8 foot piece of 1 inch sch 80 pvc for it. Total height above ground will be 16 feet.
Next storm system is forecast for this Friday, so 2 days to find out how it performs in the new location.
Old location on shed.
New location on edge of pasture.
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The first half of the storm system has gone through. The Tempest didn’t pick up much wind at all in this location, so not a real good test for wind induced false rain. There are higher winds with gusts up to 50 mph forecast for this evening, so I scrounged together some stuff I had laying around and made a longer pole. It consists of a 10.5 foot chainlink fence top pole, an 8" piece of sch 40 heavy duty 1" pvc pipe, a 1" gray pvc coupler and a plastic plug that fits the hole in the bottom of the pole perfectly. I hot glued the plug in after warming up the steel pole first, then cleaned and pvc glued the coupler to the other end of the pole and glued in the 8" pvc pipe. The plug should keep the hole from whistling in the wind and the short section of pvc pipe will hopefully act as a vibration isolator. Then I removed the 6" pvc pipe that was zip tied to the T-post and used 2 hose clamps to attach the new longer pipe to the T-post.
My main issue with this location is the storm is coming from the southeast and that is in line with a row of cedar trees and the barn. Standing by the Tempest the wind was almost calm even though the treetops are swaying and whistling is a 20 mph wind according to the weather at the airport 5 miles away. This pole moved the Tempest from 5 ft above ground level to 15 feet. The indicated wind is higher now, but still only half of what the airport is reporting. I guess I either need to accept this situation or find a different mounting location. I have trees all the way around the house, so on the house isn’t really a good option. I may go back to the shed but have to figure out how to effectively isolate the mount from wind vibrations in the steel building. I know there are vibrations in the building, you can hear them when the wind is strong.
Hmmm, just reviewing the history during the time I redid the pole. Seems when I was using the impact driver to tighten the hose clamps on the pole the Tempest registered “Extreme” rain. Not very encouraging. The T-post mount is temporary until I can get the 14 foot 6x6 pole and get it installed in concrete. The pole is slightly swaying in this wind and the ground is a bit soft in that area. I hope it doesn’t loosen up and fall over.
Looking in the direction the wind is coming from.
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I would make sure that you reboot the unit so that the anemometer can rebalance itself.
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Interesting, I wasn’t aware that was a thing. Never saw anything mentioning that. I would be very interested in the technical details of how the Tempest works just for my own curiosity and understanding. I worked many years with industrial sensors and controls and love automating as much stuff around the home as is practical. Are there any resources available for me to read up on Tempest operational details? Specifically troubleshooting details, the more detailed the better.
The evening I moved the Tempest to the current site a strong storm moved through with a radar indicated tornado passing just a few miles south of here. The airport 5 miles north of us reported wind gusts in the mid 40’s. My Tempest showed a maximum in the 30’s, yet the trees were howling and blowing about. I would have expected much higher wind readings. I have a traditional rain gauge on the deck about 200 feet from the Tempest that showed 1.10” of rain in that event, yet the Tempest reported 2.15” during the same time period. It did not indicate any rain during times it was not actually raining.
I’m looking into designing some anti-vibration mounts and moving the Tempest back to the shed where it gets better exposure to prevailing winds and will be on higher terrain. If I can isolate the vibrations of the shed building during high winds it would work well there. The building, with the horse pen fence wires anchored on one corner, actually “sings” during high winds. Kinda drives me nuts when I am out there and it’s doing that.
You can go here:
https://help.weatherflow.com/hc/en-us/categories/203614828-Tempest-Weather-System
Also feel free to use the search on the forum. That’s how I learn about a lot of things on the Tempest. 
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Thanks for the suggestion. I opened a support ticket and requested a reboot since I didn’t want to take it down to reboot it until I have the new location set up ready. The current mount is a temporary setup to test a few things and is not user friendly in regards to accessing the unit. Support rebooted it and after 4 days all the data looks good and well within reasonable expectations.
The free standing pole with 5 feet of T-post, 10 feet of chain link top pole and topped with a foot of pvc coupler and heavy wall pvc pipe to isolate high frequency vibrations has done the trick of eliminating false rain with wind gusts up to 31 mph so far.
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That’s awesome! The ultrasonic balances itself and if it isn’t balanced correctly, it can be off.
Enjoying my Tempest so far. It has worked flawlessly and was such a breeze to set up. Looking forward to the Spring/Summer active weather seasons!
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Now that the Tempest has a few storms under it’s belt I can definitely say it’s current location will not work for me. All readings are good except it’s in a wind “shadow” from the SW because of the barn and cedar trees. This is the prevailing direction of the wind during storms so I don’t see what is truly going on with the wind at a potentially critical time.
I don’t have the time right now to put in the full blown 20 foot tilt pole mount I want to build. So, for now I’m looking at moving it back to the shed and use the new pole with the PVC section on the end to help dampen vibrations. I will also put a couple inches of neoprene foam between the pole and shed and between the pole and clamps. Then time will tell if that is enough to dampen the vibrations it sees when the fence wires connected to the shed are “singing” during high winds making the whole shed sing and causing a lot of false rain.
Couple of U Bolts to the 6 foot chain link fence. About 10 foot total off ground. If all goes well will paint black to match fence. New to the community lots of lurking now to post a little.
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Welcome to the forum. If you get false rain it will be because of the vibrations in the fence traveling up the pole to the Tempest sensor. It listens to the vibrations of rain drops to calculate how much rain it has it has received. The external vibrations can fool it into thinking it is raining or raining more than it actually is.
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If false rain turns out to be a problem you might try using PVC pipe or a vinyl covered closet rod. Both of those have helped some people with the false rain issue.